SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1012 (79), Friday, October 15, 2004
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TITLE: Youths Murder Vietnamese Student
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A group of young men attacked a Vietnamese student on a central St. Petersburg street Wednesday night, and when he ran away they chased him down and stabbed him to death.
 
More than 100 foreign students rallied all night outside a dormitory at the Pavlov Medical Institute to protest against the savage slaying. Many said they feared for their lives.
 A number of dark-skinned people have been targeted in the city in recent months.
 Vu An Tuan, a 20-year-old first-year student at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, was walking to Petrogradskaya metro station after attending a friend's birthday party at the Pavlov Medical Institute dormitory when he was attacked at about 10 p.m., police said Thursday, citing witnesses.
 The witnesses said there were about 18 attackers and that they had shaven heads and black clothes and boots.
 Tuan managed to run a few meters before the men caught up with him and stabbed him, police said. 
 He died on the spot with at least five deep knife wounds.
 Police said 15 suspects have been detained. Fontanka.ru reported Thursday that the majority had been interviewed and released.
 Police said the investigation was one of racially motivated murder.
 However, deputy city prosecutor Alexander Zhukov said that investigators have not confirmed that it was a racist attack and that "the motive could have been something else."
 Scores of foreign students rallied from Wednesday night through Thursday afternoon at the dormitory, carrying signs reading, "We came here to study, but go back home in coffins," and "Get Rid of Skinheads."
 "This is not the first case. Students are being killed, and nobody does anything about it," Akhmed Kharshan, a student from Yemen, said at a cafe at the institute. "And the authorities have the nerve to say that this is just some group of hooligans. We come here to study and they kill us."
 "This is a big problem. We are especially afraid to walk on streets near metro stations, and the situation has gotten worse this year," said Sourabh Pathale, a student from India.
 Students said they regularly hear racial slurs, and every few months one of their own is threatened or beaten up - sometimes by young Russian men who seek them out in their dormitories.
 "Just two weeks have gone by since the last time such a thing happened," one protester said. 
 "A group of about 15 of these people ran up to the dormitory and smashed the windows at the entrance."
 City authorities tried to calm the students on Thursday. The murder "is a reason for many students to voice their concerns with the police and the institute," Vice Governor Oleg Virolainen said, Interfax reported.
 He said City Hall will draw up additional security measures for students and present them in two weeks. "During this time you should send your requests to the dean's office and we will examine them," he said.
 Wednesday's murder is the latest in a string of brutal attacks against dark-skinned people in St. Petersburg.
 A 9-year-old Tajik girl was brutally stabbed to death in front of her father and young cousin in February. A group of young men attacked the three in the courtyard of their apartment building as they were returning home at night. Several suspects have been arrested.
 This summer, a Syrian student died after a group described as football fans allegedly pushed him under a train in the Nevsky Prospekt metro station. 
 A 21-year-old has been charged with murder in connection with the Syrian's death. Police say he is not a member of any "extremist group and that the incident had no connection to questions of nationality." 
 Last year, a group of young men killed a 6-year-old Tajik Roma girl and seriously injured a 5-year-old girl and 18-month-old baby in an attack on a camp south of the city. Seven suspects went on trial for the attack Monday.
 Three skinheads received light sentences in March after being charged in the killing of an Azeri watermelon trader. 
 The trader, Mamed Mamedov, 53, was a father of eight and was beaten to death at his stand in 2002.
 Dark-skinned people are not the only targets. 
 A leading national expert on ethnic and racial issues, Nikolai Girenko, was shot dead in his St. Petersburg apartment in June in an attack that his colleagues and human rights advocates believe was carried out by extremists.
 Girenko had been about to appear as an expert witness in a court case concerning incitement of racial hatred in connected to the extremist organization Shults-88, members of which are on trial in St. Petersburg.
 Investigators allege that in 2001, Shults-88 leader Dmitry Bobrov put together about 10 teenagers to fight people of Jewish, Caucasus and African nationalities. The hearing will resume Oct. 22.
 However, all races seem vulnerable to criminals, and some of victims complaints are addressed at what they see as a justice system that is either unwilling or too unresponsive to protect them.
 "I'm a Chinese," Meng Qingguo, of Shanghai, China, wrote to the St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. 
 "I was robbed and almost killed several days ago in St. Petersburg, and the instigator was caught," he wrote. 
 "Logically, the robber should be put into jail, and I will get back what I lost, especially my documents," he said. 
 "But no, the robber was released, and I got nothing, because he did not confess, and he has hired a lawyer," said Meng, who speaks no Russian. 
 "Now my case will go to court, and I was told that maybe it would last one year or even longer and finally there may be no result at all.
 "I know little about Russian law," he said. 
 "Certainly, the accused's rights should be protected, but how about the victim's rights? Is it that they might be ignored? I lost almost everything: my passport, visas, money, mobile phone, and even my clothes. Without the help of the kindly police officers in No. 2 Police Station of Admiralteisky District I would barely have been able to survive."
 "I don't know what to do now," he concluded. 
 "Maybe I should go back to China as soon as possible, and never come back again."

TITLE: Hangover Cure Takes On World
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It is a harmless-looking powder, but it was developed in Soviet military laboratories for secret service agents. 
 
During the Cold War, KGB agents carried little packets of the soluble powder in their inside pockets on risky foreign missions and for provocative kitchen chats on home soil. 
 KGB agents used the drug to get others drunk without themselves ending up as wrecks the next day. Not all KGB agents could resist indulging in alcohol to the extent that they were always in control.
 Now, this secret weapon is reaching out for international markets.
 A Russian-American-Norwegian joint venture called SOS - which stands for Spirit of Sobriety - obtained marketing rights for the drug this year and has already signed plum contracts with distributors in Sweden, Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, England and Scotland.
 Over 1.5 million packs have already been shipped to Sweden.
 The powder doesn't stop people getting drunk. It is intended to eliminate the consequences of a hangover, including nausea, fatigue and headaches. Drinkers ingest one packet after imbibing, but before going to sleep.
 The remedy has been dubbed K.G.B. - or Key 2 Getting Better. 
 Developed at St. Petersburg's Military Medical Academy, this Russian military technology is being freely exported to countries that were once among the Soviet secret service's special interests.
 No one from the academy could be reached for comment.
 "K.G.B, a 100-percent natural dietary supplement, protects your system by helping it to reduce the level of acetaldehyde in your blood stream," said Kurt Stahl, one of the partners in SOS. "Acetaldehyde is a highly toxic compound which builds up within your body when you consume alcohol."
 Amber acid, or succinic acid, is the key ingredient in Key 2 Getting Better. 
 "Succinic acid is the world's most effective means of aiding your body in the metabolism of acetaldehyde," Stahl said. 
 "The succinic acid within K.G.B forces your body to break down acetaldehyde at an accelerated pace, removing it from your bloodstream and your body. By speeding up this process, K.G.B protects your body from alcohol damage and prevents hangovers."
 The idea of SOS was born when a girlfriend of one of the partners went to a St. Petersburg drug store one morning about 1 1/2 years ago and asked for a pill to ease his sore head. He liked the effect so much he started wondering about the origin of the remedy and thinking of making it available internationally.
 SOS estimates the overall worldwide market for this product to be $50 million to $100 million per year, and hopes to take 10 percent to 20 percent of this market.
 SOS is approaching large pharmaceutical chains for easier distribution. However, nightclubs and bars have a lot of potential as well. 
 "If there was a large chain of nightclubs, we would go straight to them but in most cases one or two guys own a nightclub and that is it," Stahl said. "But it is a great idea and we still may do it in the future."
 The powder is packaged differently in different countries. 
 "The United States is a very conservative market, so we are taking out the pictures of champagne and people drinking champagne," Stahl said.
 This month Stahl will fly to Asia to introduce the product to Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Macao.
 "It is a great Russian product, developed by Russian scientists that has been available here since 1996 but which has never reached the international market," Stahl said.
 Truls Abrahamsen, the distributor in Norway, believes the future is bright for sales there as the name "K.G.B." rings a bell for most Norwegians, which means the product is bound to get attention. 
 Norway even had its own KGB spy scandal. Top Norwegian civil servant Arne Treholt served 15 years in jail after being caught as a Soviet spy in late 1980s. 
 "Treholt was recently released, and there has been a lot of publicity around the case and the KGB," Abrahamsen said. "Someone even suggested to us that we hire the man to promote our product!"
 The foreigners behind the SOS are fascinated by the achievements of Soviet technology, which they believe is not recognized for its true merits. 
 "The Soviet Union was one of the world's greatest developers of nuclear technology," Stahl said. "Their cosmonauts got to space first. They built the first nuclear subs. And they developed this drug designed for the KGB agents to outdrink other spies!"
 Stories of the drinking prowess of KGB agents can be heard across the globe, and when Stahl mentioned the product to representatives of a major Hong Kong company, they weren't at all surprised. 
 "They got very interested in the brand and told me that during the Cold War years, there was a rumor among the Chinese agents that KGB spies used some high technological weapon to outdrink everyone," Stahl said. 
 In Norway, K.G.B. is being offered to companies and individual volunteers to test, and the feedback has been hugely enthusiastic, Abrahamsen said. 
 "For instance, in a group of 17 people who tested it, 15 people said they would definitely buy it, while two others weren't certain," he said. "No negative reaction was reported.

TITLE: European Court Hears Chechens' Lawsuits
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - Europe's top human rights court on Thursday heard the first cases involving alleged abuses by Russian military forces of six civilians who lived in Chechnya. 
 
Lawyers for the six civilians - five of whom were in the packed courtroom - told a seven-judge panel at the European Court of Human Rights that Russian authorities had violated their clients' rights under the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. Russia, as member of the 45-nation Council of Europe, is bound to uphold that convention. 
 Russia's representative at the court, Pavel Laptev, expressed hope that the case would not be "politicized." 
 "We view this case as a kind of test for the European Court: Will it comply with all principles of the European Convention and, most important, will it avoid double standards in its verdict?" he said, Interfax reported. 
 Bill Bowring, a human rights lawyer and professor at London Metropolitan University who is representing the Russian civilians, could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 The six are seeking 10,000 to 30,000 euros ($12,300 to $37,000) in moral damages and separate compensation for lost property and income at the court which is based in Strasbourg, France. 
 They hope to draw international attention to widespread human rights abuses of civilians during the military campaigns in Chechnya, lawyers said. 
 "This will be quite important recognition by a very authoritative international body that at least some operations in the course of the military conflict have been conducted in violation of current international law," Kirill Koroteyev, a lawyer for the victims, said ahead of Thursday's hearing. 
 Lawyers for the first two plaintiffs, Magomed Khashiyev and Roza Akayeva, argued their relatives were tortured and killed in 2000 during so-called sweep operations when federal forces searched households for suspected rebels. 
 They claim their right under the convention's articles right to life, prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and a right to an effective legal remedy were violated. 
 A second case involves Medka Isayeva, Zina Yusupova and Libkan Bazayeva, who claim their relatives were killed and their property destroyed in October 1999 by military planes. 
 The incident took place on Oct. 29 when thousands of civilians streamed from Chechnya to neighboring Ingushetia, having been promised a safe corridor out by authorities. 
 However, after they found the border was closed and were turned back, they were shelled by military planes, which left dozens killed and wounded. Russian officials later claimed they were targeting a rebel truck, the victims' lawyers said. 
 The court will also consider the case of Zara Isayeva, who says her son and three nieces were killed when the Russian military bombed the village of Katyr-Yurt in February 2000 in an attempt to destroy rebels. 
 Her lawyers argued her right to life and right to protection of property were violated, as well as her right to effective legal action. 
 Thursday's hearing lasted about 2 1/2 hours. A ruling is not expected for several months, court officials said.
 
 o
 
 New Chechen President Alu Alkhanov reappointed Sergei Abramov as the region's prime minister, Interfax reported Thursday. 


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>City Not Crime Capital
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Ivan Kondrat, Deputy Prosecutor General in the Northwestern region said Thursday it is wrong to brand St. Petersburg the criminal capital of Russia, Interfax reported.
 "I wouldn't taint the city with a title like that," the agency quoted Kondrat as saying in a statement posted on the General Prosecutor's Office web site. 
 "St. Petersburg is a major megalopolis, and tendencies there aren't different from the rest of the country. Crime rates are influenced by many factors, such as population, concentration of capital, development of economics and infrastructure. Murders of businessmen and politicians, sadly, occur in other Russian towns as well."
 Commenting on fighting corruption, Kondrat said law enforcement officers have solved 424 cases of bribery in the first 8 months of this year, which is a 4 percent increase on the same period last year.
 
 
<b>Starovoitova Trial
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The next session in the trial over the murder of late State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova has been postponed until Monday, Interfax reported Thursday.
 The court was to have begun examining evidence collected by defense lawyers on Thursday, but this was postponed because lawyers hired by the defendant Yury Kolchin were involved in other hearings that day.
 The prosecution finished presenting its evidence on Oct 5. During the further hearings the court will question 10 witnesses invited by the defense.
 There are six defendants in the case. Four other suspects are still wanted by the police.
 
 
<b>Restoration Program
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Governor Valentina Matviyenko has accepted a city program for the restoration of architectural monuments within the City Development Foundation , Interfax reported.
 Vice-governor Alexander Vakh-<br> mistrov said at a news conference Thursday that Matviyenko's initiative has been welcomed in other regions. 
 The restoration program requires around 2 billion rubles ($69 million) to complete. The plan features restoration of such famous monuments and architectural ensembles as the Smolny monastery, the Admiralty, the Yusupov palace, the Alexander Nevsky monastery and the Grand Palace in Peterhof.
 
 
 
 



TITLE: Greens Warn LAES Reactor is Dangerous
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Leningrad Nuclear Power Station, or LAES, is causing serious ecological danger to the Baltic Sea and surroundings, say environmentalists of Green World, an ecological organization based in Sosnovy Bor.
 
Ecologists say tests of pine trees that grow Sosnovy Bor, a town located five kilometers from LAES, showed that &quot;those pine trees had three times as many changes to cell development as similar trees growing 30 kilometers away from the station.&quot;
 &quot;This way a pine tree signals to us the unfavorable state of the environment,&quot; Vladimir Zimin, a Green World expert, said Thursday at a news conference.
 The aim of the conference was to raise public awareness about the danger of restarting LAES' renovated Chernobyl-type, No. 1 reactor, but also focused on the environmental dangers of aging LAES.
 The station is the main supplier of electricity to St. Petersburg, and there are plans to transport some of its power to Finland.
 Zimin said the cell development changes in pine trees are caused by low-level radiation coming from the station combined with chemical pollution.
 &quot;Even little doses of radiation have a tendency to accumulate in human bodies and cause genetic consequences for generations to come,&quot; Zimin said.
 Another environmental hazard caused by LAES was the thermal pollution of the waters of the Baltic Sea caused by the overflow of LAES wastewater. He said those waters destroy marine food chains in Koporskaya Bay on the Gulf of Finland.
 By taking water from the Gulf, LAES causes the death of millions of fish in those water supply systems, he added.
 The damage from the LAES water supply system costs the fishing industry $3,500 daily, and that is counting only the damage caused by the two of the working reactors, Zimin said.
 LAES spokesman Sergei Averyanov said, however, he didn't have any information about the cell-development changes in the pine trees at Sosnovy Bor.
 He also doubted LAES water supply system could be killing that many fish each day.
 He knew about the thermal effect on the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea from the LAES disposal waters, but said it was not that dangerous, and said it was the price people had to pay for having an electricity supply.
 &quot;Mankind should realize that it has to make a conscious choice for taking certain extent of risk for using electric energy,&quot; he said. &quot;In the last 30 years LAES produced 660 billion kilowatt hours of electric energy. Just count how much gas and coal it saved, and how much pollution from burning coal that prevented.&quot;
 The ecologists said reactor No. 1 - which is the oldest type of Russian nuclear reactor - had served out the 30 years for which it was built. It is being restarted without a federal environmental impact evaluation, which violates the Constitution. 
 LAES has a license for the reactor only from the Federal Nuclear Supervision Service, the ecologists said, adding that LAES personnel is insufficiently trained to operate the new equipment.
 However, Averyanov said an environmental evaluation is needed only for a new apparatus, or if an old machine is expanded. Neither was the case with the reactor No 1. 
 LAES staff have been given special training courses to operate the restored reactor, though they still need experience to deal with the new systems, he said.
 On Sunday the reactor, which was restarted for test runs, was shut down when its emergency security system suddenly signaled an alarm. 
 Oleg Bodrov, head of Green World, said the reasons of sudden shut down of the reactor had to do with many infringements of procedures when the start up of the reactor began.
 LAES experts are investigating the incident. The reactor will not to be restarted until the cause for the alarm is found.

TITLE: Family Shelter to Open Soon
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new women's shelter will open January in the Fruzensky district after a $30,000 grant from the Dutch government and a $26,000 contribution from district funds, officials say.
 
Marina Levina, president of local charity Parent's Bridge, said the shelter - a 100-square-meter, four-room apartment - will accommodate up to four mothers and their young children.
 &quot;The center will allow the mothers and babies to live in conditions similar to those of an apartment,&quot; she said.
 Yelena Zgurskaya, head of the district's social welfare department, said the facility will also be used for daycare several hours a day for up to 10 children up to the age of two. The women said more than 8 percent of families living in the Frunzenzky district are headed by single mothers and most have young children.
 &quot;In 2003, there were 2.1 as many divorces as there were marriages,&quot; Levina said. Last year, about 200 Fruzensky district children were registered as rejected by their parents, up nearly 11 percent on the previous year, Levina said.
 Lyubov Sazonova, a St. Petersburg spokeswoman for the Dutch foreign ministry's MATRA program, said the project is partially funded by the program.
 MATRA was started in 1994 to benefit the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It will fund any individual project up to a value of $863,000.
 The Frunzensky district project began in September and has funding through January 2007 with a total budget of about $150,000, Sazonova said.
 Since 1998, the percentage of infants out of all children in city orphanages has climbed from 23 percent to 48 percent, although the total number of children entering city orphanages has dropped by 11 percent, Levina said.

TITLE: New 'Force' Targets Fashionistas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Modny Desant, or &quot;Fashion Landing Force,&quot; a festival and contest of creative pret-a-porter fashion, comes to town on Friday, Oct. 22 to create a bridge between fashion and the underground. 
 
The Metro is the festival's main theme, and the pavilion in Lenexpo, its main venue, will plunge guests into an appropriate atmosphere with escalators, ticket machines and sounds of departing trains.
 The creative forces behind Modny Desant describe it as an event for the uninitiated. Unlike the respectable &quot;Defile On the Neva&quot; which targets well-off, middle-aged customers, this festival is aimed at fashion-conscious youngsters.
 &quot;We are not looking for super-rich customers,&quot; said project director Lyudmila Kushnir. &quot;It is all meant to establish a direct contact between fashion and those interested in fashion.&quot;
 Fifteen young experimental designers from throughout Russia will compete for a Grand Prix, which combines a plum $5,000 prize with the right to participate in fashion weeks in Moscow or St. Petersburg. 
 Designer Alla Selyanina of Yekaterinburg-based &quot;Marshall Plan,&quot; a series of brightly colored army-style clothes made of rough canvas, while designer duo Nelya Mamleyeva and Olesya Masanova will treat audiences with a collection of kilts. Items from Anastasia Ivanova's collection provoke associations with silent cinema. 
 &quot;In fashion, just like in silent films, emotions are transmitted without the use of words,&quot; Ivanova said.
 Nadezhda Kozhevnikova, chief editor of the local edition of Elle magazine, welcomed the event. 
 &quot;Fashion is a tricky thing: you can't really make it very far in life if you ignore it, but on the other hand you shouldn't take it too seriously,&quot; she said. &quot;I can only wish Modny Desant keeps that healthy note of playfulness and craftiness as time goes on.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>City Population to Fall
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The population of St. Petersburg is decreasing by 30,000 people each year, and is expected to fall to between 3.7 million and 3.8 million people from the current 4.6 million, Interfax reported Tuesday. 
 The figures were revealed during a presentation by local scientific research institution "Peterburgsky Niigrad" at the Legislative Assembly, the report said.
 Niigrad is a contraction in Russian that means "city of scientific research institutes." 
 Although the overall popuation is decreasing, migration to the city accounts for 60 percent to 80 percent of the new additions to the city's population. It has been suggested that the city improves the climate for migrants further to avoid a demographic catastrophe caused by the falling numbers.
 
 
<b>United Russia Expands
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Unified Russia faction in the city's Legislative Assembly has increased by six people, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 United Russia has absorbed the entire Mariinskaya faction consisting of five lawmakers: Alexei Belousov, Sergei Andenko, Vladimir Yeryomenko, Alexander Kushchak and Igor Timofeyev. 
 Viktor Yevtukhov of the "Party of Life" faction also joined the United Russia. 
 Andenko told Interfax that the decision was made primarily "to consolidate efforts to resist destructive attempts to dismiss assembly speaker Vadim Tyulpanov from his post."
 United Russia is the largest faction in the city parliament with 19 members.
 
 
<b>Doctor on Murder Rap
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Sergei Tikhomirov, head of a city drug clinic and its chief drug clinician has been charged with murdering his deputy, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 "All six people detained in connection with the murder, including Tikhomirov, are facing the accusation," Interfax quoted Vladislav Piotrovsky, head of the city's criminal police department, as saying. "Both the organizers and those who did the crime have a medical connection, namely forensic medicine."
 Piotrovsky said the murder was motivated by financial reasons as well as internal problems between top management at the center.
 Lyudmila Artyukhovskaya, deputy head of the clinic, was killed by an explosion on Ulitsa Zamshina at the end of August. On the same evening, explosives were found in the staircase of Tikhomirov's apartment building.
 The police believe Tikhomirov planted the explosives to remove suspicions against himself and mislead the police.
 
 
<b>City LDPR Dissolves
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Liberal Democratic faction in the city's Legislative Assembly ceased to exist as it broke apart during a dispute over a possible vote of no confidence in Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 Alexei Timofeyev, Vadim Voitanovsky and Igor Mikhailov, who supported the no-confidence vote, have left the faction.
 To form a faction at the city parliament, a minimum of five people is required. The departure of three lawmakers, left the Liberal Democrats with only three other deputies making it impossible to maintain the faction's status.
 The Legislative Assembly has four factions: United Russia with 19 members, the Party of Life with 7 members, the Democratic faction, a union of liberals from Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces with 7 members, and the People's Patriotic Party faction with 5 members.
 
 



TITLE: Code Aims to See the Wood for the Trees
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The new edition of Code for Forests and Timber is due to be presented to the State Duma for approval at the end of the month, making it the 18th amended version of the legislature presented to the officials in the last six months.
 
The code, which regulates the use of woodland in the country, has been heavily criticized for its lack of clarity, concrete formulation and for almost completely failing to provide any federal industry regulations, thereby leaving the issue for the regional authorities. It has also been blamed for the overall poor state of the industry: lack of serious investors and low timber processing volumes.
 &quot;Out of total investment made into the Russian economy last year, the Forest and Timber industry (LPK) received only 3 percent,&quot; said head of forestry commission at the natural resources ministry, Valery Roschupkin at the Sixth International Timber Production Forum that opened in the city on Tuesday. &quot;And the industry holds much more potential than that,&quot; he said.
 According to the official figures, Russia has the largest woodland resources in the world with 22 percent of the world's forestland. Most of it is located in the Northwest region and in Russia's far east. Besides domestic demand for Northwest and, in particular, Leningrad Oblast timber, it is exported all over Europe. Russia's far eastern reserves are transported to Asia. According to statistics, however, after felling, only 20 percent of the trees are processed.
 &quot;In 2003, out of 554 million cubic meters of trees allowed for felling, only 128 million was realized. The total volumes growth was 1.5 percent last year, although exports grew by 12 percent and the total investment neared $825 million,&quot; said Roschupkin.
 According to industry insiders, a whole chain of factors impedes industry development: illegal wood felling, practiced heavily in the Oblast, lack of investments in timber-processing industries, and the ambiguous position of the government in regards to forest ownership and investor relations.
 &quot;It is not even clear which area of the law the land code belongs to and who carries the responsibility to enforce it,&quot; said Ernst&amp;Young manager, Ivan Smirnov.
 The newly amended code, expected to come into action next year, attempts to solve some of these issues. &quot;It should have a more detailed explanation of each of the code articles and shape the industry into a civilized one,&quot; said Smirnov. 
 Overall, there are no negative factors for business in the proposed code. It provides an auctioning of lease rights to land plots for a period of 99 years, said Smirnov. Much like the real estate land auctions, such practices should help making the industry more transparent and open it up to competition. Currently, there are no serious players involved in the early stages of timber processing and development.
 It remains to be seen, however, whether the newly proposed code can even make it to a reading in the Duma readings. It has already sparked many negative remarks from ecologists and government officials, who call for more state control and say that once opened up for auctions, forests will be monopolized by oligarchs.
 &quot;Only a few people in Russia will have the money to buy the renting rights, estimated at $100 per hectare,&quot; said the deputy head of the Duma's natural resources committee, Alexander Belyakov at the forum, adding that as the code stands now, it leaves forests open for misuse. 
 Rashid Aliyev, the deputy editor of &quot;Law and Ecology&quot; magazine agreed with the need for corrections. &quot;There should be serious corrections made to the existing code project to enforce state control for better forest preservation,&quot; he said, 
 However, Smirnov called these fears unfounded. With a new code, forest preservation terms would be stated in the contract made with auction-winners, as opposed to being enforced by Ministry of Natural Resources officials or by some other governmental bodies, the way it was done in the Soviet era, he said.
 &quot;The contract would outline the profile of leasee activities and set out the guidelines for sustainable forestry, allowing the same administrative or even criminal sanctions to be imposed should rules be broken,&quot; said Smirnov. Complaints from ecologists and officials come from a fear of being left out of the process, he said.

TITLE: Concorde Eyes City Tourists
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: French hotel chain Concorde is stepping up its promotional campaign in St. Petersburg to attract lucrative deals offered by Russian tour companies, Oksana Krotova, the company's Russian sales representative, has said.
 
Concorde sales directors have spent the week in St. Petersburg and Moscow presenting the merits of their top hotels in France to a Russian tourist market that a report published by Fontanka.ru already rates as 13th most valuable in the world.
 &quot;Russian tourists already form 8 or 9 percent of our clientele,&quot; said Hotel de la Paix's director of sales Stephane Marcet.
 &quot;We have invested heavily in [the Russian market] by translating all our promotional literature into Russian,&quot; added Sylvie Belot, director of sales at Hotel Concorde Saint-Lazare, a premium four-star Concorde hotel in Paris. 
 &quot;We want to communicate with our clients fully. We have installed a Russian TV channel, and there are a number of new, Russian vodka-based cocktails in our bar,&quot; she said.
 Concorde's campaign is aimed mainly at attracting the higher-end of the market - those looking at 4- and 5-star accommodation. 
 The hotel group is also placing strong emphasis on families taking a vacation in France and those looking for leisure breaks. 
 &quot;We have Russian officials staying frequently, but, I am here to attract family clients&quot;, said Alexandra Wapler, director of sales for Hotel Lutetia - a leading five-star Paris hotel.
 Concorde hopes that most of its clients will come from St. Petersburg rather than Moscow.
 &quot;We see that Moscow is growing in terms of business, but St. Petersburg in terms of tourists,&quot; said Berlot.
 France currently welcomes the highest number of tourists each year than any country in the world (76.5 million), and receives the second highest revenue from tourism ($29.3m) after the U.S. 
 &quot;France certainly leads in terms of popularity for our tourists,&quot; confirmed Russian Union of Tourism's Northwest region spokesperson, Natalya Yermashova. &quot;And our tourists like to relax well; they holiday in style and spend a lot of money abroad,&quot; she added.
 However, this year's summer season was not a particularly good time for Russians wishing to travel to France.
 Increased visa restrictions and an allegedly retaliatory attack on a French Embassy staff member for refusing to process visa documentation have affected regular tourism, said Krotova.
 Yermashova does not consider this a problem, however, and says the appeal Russian tourists have for foreign operators comes from the adaptability of Russians.
 &quot;Our tourists will go to a destination despite negative events. After the war in Iraq [started] there were inquiries just days later,&quot; said Yermashova. &quot;People were wondering if there was a discount for tours to there.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Mercedes Considers City
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Mercedes heavy goods vehicles could be made at a St. Petersburg factory, announced deputy head of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, Alexander Ivannikov.
 Daimler-Chrystler, the maker of Mercedes, will make a decision by the end of the year whether to open a car plant in the city, Ivannikov was quoted as saying to RosBusinessConsulting.
 Speaking at an open table discussion on the city's industrial development, Ivannikov explained that the city has submitted all necessary documents to the car manufacture when representatives visited the city.
 Early suggestions about location include areas with developed infrastructure in the south and the north of the city which would offer the large space such car plants require, Ivannikov was reported as saying.
 Construction will begin "from scratch" and should bring several hundreds of million dollars into the city, said Ivannikov.
 
 
<b>Pulkovo Agrees in Baltic
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Pulko vo and Air Baltic airlines have announced plans to cooperate in flight scheduling and sales, according to RosBusinessConsulting.
 St Petersburg-based Pulkovo airline will coordinate its flights with Latvia's Air Baltic for the companies' mutual benefit. Furthermore, tickets for Air Baltic flights will now become available at Pulkovo sales offices, and vice versa.
 The move adds a further interline agreement for Pulkovo who has over 50 such deals with airlines including Air France, Finnair, and Delta.
 
 
<b>For the Record
 </b>

The Stockholm School of Economics is hosting a seminar on doing business in China. The seminar will take place at SSE's Russia City campus, 2 Shvesdky Pereulok on Oct. 20 (start at 9.30am; registration at 9am). Questions that the seminar hopes to tackle are opportunities for Russo-Chinese economic partnerships, especially in production. Alongside will run advice for Russian companies wanting to conduct business in China. (SPT)
 
 n St. Petersburg-Moscow route will be serviced by double-decker trains from 2006. The new wagons will accommodate a total of 109 passengers: 44 on the top and 51 on the bottom deck, and a middle salon for family compartments and conversation lounges. The new express service will reach speeds of 200 kilometers an hour. (SPT)
 
 n A new forestry and timber bi-monthly magazine, Lesnaya Industriya ('Timber Industry'), has just been launched. It is aimed at those working in the higher echelons of the industry, and it hopes to produce advice as well as information for successful timber and wood-processing businesses. (SPT) 



TITLE: WEF: Russia Excels at Corruption
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Corruption hits businesses harder in Russia than in almost every other country, a new survey shows.
 
Of the 104 nations surveyed by the World Economic Forum for its annual Global Competitiveness Report, only four - Madagascar, Ukraine, Macedonia and Chad - were found to be worse than Russia when it comes to the costs crooked officials impose on companies.
 Despite ranking near last in several other categories, too - only Ukraine and Paraguay top Russia when it comes to laundering money, for example - the country retained its No. 70 ranking for overall competitiveness and actually moved up four slots in terms of &quot;business competitiveness.&quot;
 Based on interviews with more than 8,700 business leaders around the world, the survey concluded that corruption remains Russia's biggest economic weakness, followed by vague and complex tax laws, poor access to financing and an inefficient government. 
 In several categories, in fact, Russia lags behind many of the world's poorest nations.
 When it comes to &quot;irregular payments&quot; in judicial proceedings, for example, Russia is sandwiched between Macedonia and Angola at No. 83, while in terms of bribery related to import and export permits it ranks 91st, just above Mozambique and below Uganda.
 In the bureaucracy category, as measured by the amount of time senior executives spend negotiating with government officials, Russia ranks 89th, slightly better than Ghana and slightly worse than Honduras.
 &quot;The dynamics of corruption are certainly negative,&quot; said Georgy Satarov, who runs Indem, a think tank that focuses on problems related to corruption. &quot;And this relates to all aspects of it - scale, size of bribes, the system's defense mechanisms - even blatancy.&quot;
 Satarov said the government lacks the will to implement a systematic and comprehensive program to deal with the issue, settling instead for half-hearted administrative and tax reforms.
 &quot;It is like trying to irrigate the Sahara with a glass of water,&quot; he said.
 Corruption is so deeply embedded in this country that it seems to function like a virus that survives attempts to eradicate it by mutating.
 &quot;At best relations between businesses and the state do not change,&quot; said Ksenia Yudayeva, a scholar-in-residence focusing on economic issues at the Carnegie Moscow Center. &quot;Even when the laws are changed in favor of business, the system itself adjusts to the starting point,&quot; she said.
 Even government officials admit the issue is not a priority.
 &quot;At one point paperwork was falling a little, and if it is rising again then it is obvious that we must work on it again,&quot; said Arkady Dvorkovich, head of the presidential administration's Expert Department.
 &quot;There has definitely been a pause in this process of cutting administrative barriers - at one point in 2000 and 2001 this was the main priority and it was seriously worked on, but the past few years it has hardly been worked on at all,&quot; Dvorkovich told reporters Tuesday. &quot;The administrative system has started to work again by its eternal rules - it reproduces itself and gives birth to a lot of rules and paperwork.&quot;
 President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser paints an even darker picture. &quot;Corruption has grown, become more qualitative, more implanted and moved into new spheres,&quot; said Andrei Illarionov. &quot;One could say this phenomenon has come to every house,&quot; he said without elaborating.
 Alexei Moisseyev, an economist at Renaissance Capital, said the effect that corruption and red tape have on the economy might be better understood if the money and time companies spend as a result are viewed as a kind of tax.
 High &quot;taxes&quot; can hurt economic development, particularly if revenues from them are not distributed to society equally, Moisseyev said. But this burden is less noticeable when the country is swimming in petrodollars, he said.
 On a more positive note, Russia ranked: fifth in terms of hiring and firing practices; eighth in federal budget health; 17th in wage flexibility; 19th in quality of scientific research institutions; 25th in the effect HIV/AIDS has on business, and 26th in railroad development.
 
 <i>
Staff Writer Guy Faulconbridge contributed to this story. </i>

TITLE: S&P Claims Firms Lack Transparency
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The ownership of three quarters of privately held shares in Russia's 50 largest companies is not publicly known, according to a study published Wednesday.
 
Although transparency has improved since last year, Russian companies remain murky, Standard &amp; Poor's concluded in its annual &quot;Russian Transparency and Disclosure Survey.&quot;
 The telecom sector, led by Rostelecom, is Russia's most transparent sector, the study found, while banking is the least. The ownership of 76 percent of privately owned shares, worth some $114 billion, is not publicly disclosed. 
 &quot;You won't see 100 percent [ownership] disclosure in any country,&quot; Oleg Shvyrkov, one of the study's authors, said. Nevertheless, 24 percent is still very low compared to Western countries, where 60 to 70 percent of ownership in public companies is disclosed, he said.
 Even though &quot;this year's actions against Russia's largest oil company [Yukos] could have potentially negatively affected&quot; disclosure, S&amp;P found that transparency increased by 6 points to 46 percent from last year. 
 Russia beat Latin America, which got 31 percent for overall transparency in S&amp;P's comparable 2002 research, but the United States and Britain remain far ahead, with transparency levels of 70 percent and 71 percent respectively.
 Opaque ownership structure keeps companies from attracting financing, said Peter Westin, chief economist at Aton. &quot;Only 4 percent of fixed investment in Russia is financed through bank loans ... [while] the demand for bank loans is quite high,&quot; he said. 
 The legal onslaught against Yukos, a company &quot;at the forefront of transparency,&quot; Westin said, did not encourage other firms to be more open.
 To gauge transparency, S&amp;P rated publicly available information about the country's 50 largest companies, whose combined market capitalization amounts to $186 billion, or 95 percent of the total market.
 S&amp;P rated the telecom sector highest among domestic industries with 72 percent transparency, while banking is the straggler with 38 percent.
 Yulia Kochetygova, director of S&amp;P's corporate governance rating division and an author of the study, acknowledged that transparency in the banking sector may be slightly higher since Sberbank was the only bank among the 50 companies in the survey.
 &quot;But the overall banking transparency would be unlikely to exceed 50 percent,&quot; Kochetygova said.
 Western participation has helped improve corporate governance practices. &quot;Telecoms already have big foreign participation in them, while banks do not,&quot; Westin said. 
 Another incentive for telecoms to become more open is that they constantly need new investment, Kochetygova said.
 Long-distance telephone service monopoly Rostelecom was ranked most transparent this year, bumping aside juice and dairy giant Wimm-Bill-Dann, which was named most open last year.
 &quot;Wimm-Bill-Dann did not become less transparent ... but Rostelecom is currently the only company that fully discloses its remuneration,&quot; Kochetygova said. 
 Overall, the disclosure of remuneration for companies' executives improved 10 points from last year, but remains the most opaque point, closely followed by financial information and ownership structure. Rostelecom's transparency of ownership structure was a reason why it was favorably distinguished from other telecom players, VimpelCom and Golden Telecom, which S&amp;P ranked 4th and 17th in openness among the 50 firms.


TITLE: Overcoming Russia's History
TEXT: Vladimir Putin's proposals to centralize power in the Kremlin even further gives an opportunity to revisit the debate between Richard Pipes and Alexander Lukin in the pages of The Moscow Times on July 6 and 21. The debate was about the reasons for Russia's turning away from democracy. 
 
To Pipes this came as no surprise: It merely showed Russia's incapacity for freedom, rooted in the long history of the patrimonial state. He cited evidence from recent opinion polls revealing &quot;a preference for order over freedom, suspicion of democracy and the free market, and nostalgia for the Soviet Union.&quot; 
 Lukin countered that the &quot;anti-democratic&quot; mood in Russia today is not the consequence of ancient history, but a &quot;not entirely adequate,&quot; though understandable, response to the weakness and corruption of government in the post-communist period. 
 Pipes' claim that it reflected a 700-year history of unfreedom was &quot;so general as to be almost meaningless.&quot;
 My instincts are with Lukin: The economic and political traumas of the 1990s were the worst possible breeding ground for a nascent democracy. The restoration of the state and the economy, the curtailment of corruption and gangsterism were bound to be top priorities for any post-Yeltsin government. 
 Yet the accelerating momentum to centralize and control beyond any reasonable requirements for a strong state or the &quot;war on terrorism&quot; does suggest that a deeper historical reflex may be at work.
 There are three main candidates. The first is the absence in the Russian political tradition of any doctrine of restraint on the ruler's actions. Most societies have developed such traditions. 
 In China it is Confucianism. Here, the restraint is internal to the ruler. The good ruler is the virtuous man. 
 The Analects of Confucius are mainly concerned with the rules of virtuous conduct. Foremost among these are the rules of propriety: The superior man does things in the proper way. &quot;Riches and honor are what men desire,&quot; Confucius says. 
 &quot;If they cannot be obtained in the proper way, they should not be held. Poverty and meanness are what men dislike. If they cannot be avoided in the proper way, they should not be avoided.&quot; Confucius repeatedly warns against passion, excess, bias, rhetoric, haste. 
 One Confucian maxim that Deng Xiaoping, unlike Mao Zedong, certainly took to heart was, &quot;Do not be desirous to have things done quickly. ... Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly.&quot;
 Confucianism is highly conservative. The more dynamic West developed a specialized philosophy of rule - political theory - based on the principle of external restraint. 
 What is important is not the character of the ruler but the external checks that exist to the exercise of his always imperfect will. One can trace this evolution from the church-state conflict in the Middle Ages through the social contract ideas of the 17th century to the constitutional theory of the separation of powers. 
 Both systems of restraint, Eastern and Western, nevertheless had a common aim: to prevent people from being treated simply as instruments of the ruler's will.
 One searches in vain for a similarly well-established philosophy of restraint in Russian history. The revolt of Patriarch Nikon in the 17th century against tsarist absolutism failed: &quot;A society which provided unique opportunities for the growth of the governmental machine left no room for the growth of a politically and economically independent dominant religion,&quot; Wittfogel writes. Nor did any secular or constitutional tradition of limited rule emerge. 
 There was no internal escape, therefore, from the tradition of absolute despotism. Whether the fragile Russian liberalism of the silver age would have broken the hold of despotism but for World War I remains the great unanswered question. Instead, Lenin's Bolshevik state was built on the foundations of tsarist autocracy. The great Russian rulers have been the most terrible ones: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Stalin.
 The grandiose and grotesque Foreign Ministry suggests a second explanation for Russia's anti-liberal history: &quot;The residues of empire,&quot; an official once remarked to me. Pipes himself writes: &quot;Russia has had to administer too vast a territory with too limited resources to indulge in democracy.&quot; 
 But it's not the vastness or poverty of the territory - as Lukin points out - that has prevented democracy, but its imperial character. 
 According to the historian Geoffrey Hosking, the Russian empire (&quot;Rossia&quot;) has always prevented the political development of the Russian nation (&quot;Rus&quot;). 
 This interpretation is based on the solid empirical link between nationalism and democracy. Russia had to become a nation before it could become a democracy.
 It seemed that this was about to happen when Russia pulled out of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has now become clearer that the end of the Soviet empire did not automatically spell the end of the imperial state. 
 This is because there are too many &quot;residues&quot; of imperial rule scattered throughout the Russian Federation and its near abroad. Chechnya, deeply implanted in the Russian state, cannot be cut out of the homeland, as the Western Europeans did with their colonial empires. Beyond this, natural resources - once Russian, now &quot;foreign&quot; - and &quot;irredenta&quot; of Russian populations in the Baltic states and Ukraine offer a constant temptation to reassert imperial control. All of this will continue to exercise a baleful influence on internal political development. 
 A third explanation for the re-emergence of autocracy pays less attention to ancient history and more to the dialectics of revolution. This is the approach of the economist Vladimir Mau. The collapse of the old regime (in this case communism) weakens the state and fragments society to such an extent that support grows for the reimposition of order by force. 
 Thus, the &quot;regime of personal dictatorship, whether it be that of Cromwell, Napoleon, or Stalin, flows naturally from the logic of the revolutionary process.&quot; Whether the present Putin phase will be followed by the consolidation of dictatorship or the growth of liberal democracy is historically open-ended. Thus Mau's view has some affinity to Lukin's.
 The weakness shared by all these interpretations, it seems to me, is the insufficient attention they pay to voluntarism in determining political outcomes. 
 It is surely not necessary to be a Bolshevik or a Nietzschean to allow a big role for political leadership. It is not just the future that is open-ended, but the present. 
 How people think and act now will help shape the future. A democratic opposition to Putin's still-flabby Bonapartism is by no means doomed to fail. But against the background of Russian history, it will require intelligence, courage and leadership of a high order. 
 
 <i>Robert Skidelsky is a member of the British House of Lords and professor of political economy at Warwick University, England. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Let the Public Witness Trial Over Child's Murder
TEXT: The city court made a bad move this week by deciding to shut the public out of the trial of seven suspects, said to be skinheads, who are charged with killing a seven-year-old Tajik Roma girl in September 2003.
 
The court has ruled the doors be shut to protect the nerves of the seven suspects, some of whom have not reached the age where they can face full criminal responsibility for what they do.
 I guess the nerves of the attackers were all right when they attacked the Roma family in a St. Petersburg suburb, beating up children and women with metal chains and sticks, severely injuring a five-year-old girl and killing another.
 A member of the city board of lawyers I spoke to about the matter this week said the decision to hold the trial in a closed court could be reasonable because it might be that not only physical force was used, but that there was also sex abuse, which would make the case even more disturbing.
 &quot;If I met a skinhead on a street, without a doubt, I would hit him in his face,&quot; said Oleg Babushkin, the lawyer. 
 &quot;The way skinheads should be treated is quite clear to me. On the other hand, the presence of TV cameras and journalists [in the courtroom] would have created an unnecessary stir.&quot; Under the Criminal Code, the court has a right to close hearings to the public provided no intimate issues of suspects or defendants are to be discussed. If any of the parties is underage or in cases involving sexual abuse, the hearings can also be closed. 
 So, on the one hand, there could be more than enough reasons in the case of the St. Petersburg trial for judges to take such a decision.
 On the other hand, the problem of national hatred, which, in a worrying tendency, is growing in Russia each year. 
 It seems to me that this could be a more important reason that the judge should take into consideration. 
 In this particular case, the court and the city prosecutor's office should do everything possible to publicize the trial to let the public know how awful the atmosphere is in the city, which long ago was hailed as the most liberal place in Russia.
 This is only the second trial on charges of national hatred heard by the city court in the last two years, despite attacks on people with a different skin color occurring regularly.
 One foreign journalist, who originally came from Africa and has been working in St. Petersburg for years, is a good example in this matter. He carries a protective gas spray in his pocket, just in case, after getting into trouble a few times when attacked by youngsters on the streets of St. Petersburg.
 &quot;I don't know whether to run away from the police or from bad guys on the street,&quot; the journalist said on conditions of anonymity. &quot;Going to the police for help is like going out of the frying pan and into the fire, especially if you're such an obvious foreigner like me from Africa.&quot;
 &quot;I've been a victim of skinheads several times, but I don't consider this as a big deal because, unlike me, many of my people end up in a hospital, or are even killed. 
 &quot;The thing is that minor attacks don't make the news,&quot; he said.
 These days attacks on people with different appearances have become routine in St. Petersburg and do not result in any strong public response. In many ways this is because people don't really know what is going on in their city and how serious the problem is.
 For this reason trials like the one of the alleged killers of the Roma girl should be open to make people hear what the suspects say in their defense, although the legal terminology sounds quite awkward here.
 If people see the faces of the killers of children they will make their own conclusions.

TITLE: Magical, Mystery Tour
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A look back over the life and work of American artist Sheila Isham, a retrospective of whose work opened in Mikhailovsky Castle on Wednesday, shows she has traversed both the globe (she has lived in Germany, Russia, India, China, Haiti) and painting styles (abstract expressionism, figurative art, expressionism). The exhibition presents Isham's work to St. Petersburg art fans for the second time following her Russian debut at the Russian Museum in 1998 when her Cosmic Bull series was shown in the Marble Palace. However, Isham became acquainted with Russia as long ago as the late 1950s when she lived here with her diplomat husband.
 
Although most of Sheila's works are abstract paintings, which give special attention to color, they often reflect the philosophy of the native cultures she has experienced during her lifetime, those of Germany, Russia, China, India, and Haiti - integrating these influences into her own artistic pattern. Series of paintings on cosmic, mythic, and rhythmic themes, along with works devoted to China, the U.S. and Russia, form Isham's artistic identity, which, even when split into styles and regional influences, retains its integrity. As Alexander Borovsky, Isham's curator at the Russian Museum, put it, &quot;ancient Chinese calligraphy, traditional Indian meditation practices, Haitian mythology - all these sources have done much to inspire her. Yet, even taking much from the visual world and philosophy of those lands... Isham remains nonetheless an American artist, returning each time enriched to the American cultural sphere.&quot; 
 A frequent visitor to Russia, Isham has actively followed local painting traditions and explored the structure of Russian myths and archetypes. She has witnessed Russian society changing and has tried to catch its inherent mysticism, as well as the rise and fall of social philosophies. 
 After 4 1/2 years of studying in the Berlin Academy of Fine arts, where she first encountered the works of the German expressionists and studied Max Beckmann, Vasily Kandinsky and other early and mid-20th century European artists, Isham and her husband went to live and work in the American embassy in Moscow in 1955.
 &quot;I was followed most of the time then... I was not able to meet with contemporary Russian artists, art students, even to draw freely,&quot; Isham says. 
 Once, Isham was almost arrested by a vigilant Soviet officer who noticed that an American was drawing a building, which, according to Isham, turned out to be a center for KGB interrogations. 
 Sheila drew quite a few log cabins (<i>izbi</i>), which later formed the Russian series of black and white lithographs.
 In Moscow Isham met the legendary collector George Kostakis, who was working at the Greek embassy and collecting Russian avant-garde masterpieces - including works by Malevich, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Goncharova and Larionov. 
 It was this collection that gave Isham a deeper insight into Russian modern art. By that time Kostarkis had been living in Moscow for some years and was to stay another couple of decades. The Ishams stayed in close contact with Kostarkis until his recent death.
 &quot;On our trips to Sochi, Sukhumi, Tbilisi and other places we met some underground artists and a number of Russian writers and poets,&quot; Isham remembers, adding that she was close to authors Viktor Yerofeyev and Daniil Granin, and poet Josef Brodsky and his wife Maria. 
 An interest in poetry gave life to another strand of Isham's work - illustrating hand-made poetry books. She has made unique single-copy books of ancient Indian poets (Hafiz, Kabir) and just finished a book of poems by tragic Soviet poet Marina Tsvetayeva (in a Russian/English edition). She has also planned an illustrated Anna Akhmatova volume. &quot;Poetry and art have always been close together,&quot; Isham says.
 Another of Isham's interests is calligraphy. She studied classical Chinese calligraphy in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s. 
 &quot;I felt a need to absorb eastern culture, that's why I wasn't a passing visitor in Hong-Kong but tried to penetrate [the culture] as deeply as I could. I chose calligraphy because it seemed to me to be abstract and perfect at the same time,&quot; Isham says. &quot;I wanted to borrow something from Chinese culture, just as they had borrowed something from the Indian culture before that. I sank into Chinese culture, into calligraphy.&quot;
 Isham was inspired by &quot;the notion, by the inner power of the brush stroke&quot; of calligraphy. Later she also went to India to study sculpture.
 After a long voyage in the East, Isham came back to New York and plunged into abstract painting, with the influence of eastern techniques vivid on her canvass. She tried to express the conflict between East and West in her works, and, because pop and op art were in fashion then, Isham's paintings were heavily criticized. The criticism simply encouraged Isham to develop further. &quot;I never hesitated about what I was doing,&quot; she says. 
 She calls a fire in her studio in 1972, which destroyed many of her paintings, one of the biggest challenges in her life. 
 &quot;It was a mess. Some paintings were burned completely, while some were disfigured by the fire. And then I thought that the burnt studio looked like a painting, like a myth, something you might want to take the picture of. I had to come to terms with that. I became freer in a way.&quot; 
 As with many abstract expressionists, Isham pays special attention to color. 
 &quot;I am totally in love with color and I don't think [about it] intellectuall; color just comes naturally. Color is one of the most intrinsic native emotions,&quot; Isham says, adding that in her paintings the colors are usually set from the very beginning, although it usually takes her at least several months to complete one picture. 
 Most of her pictures (both abstract and figurative) are not bound by frames. They represent a part of the world with an archetypal pattern. Blurred colors and images, figures used as backgrounds, and colors as figures - all of them unite and step out from the surface of the painting. They move and stay still, as if they are living creatures. She has sometimes painted animals, and less often, people. Her &quot;animalism&quot; was inspired by India and was behind her &quot;Cosmic Earth Bull&quot; series, which was shown at the Marble Palace six years ago.
 Isham noted the eastern influence in Russian art and paid a great deal of attention to this facet of it during her first period here in the 1950s. 
 &quot;Russia is a real bridge between the East and the West.&quot; Isham says. She is interested in the mysticism practiced by spiritualist Yelena Blavatskaya in the early 20th century and the way it affected art. 
 &quot;I admire the Russian mystical tradition, its understanding of the humorous sides of myths, deep questions it poses,&quot; Isham says.
 As yet unfamiliar with Russian contemporary art, Isham says that art, in general, is freer today than it used to be. 
 &quot;There's no specific style; artists can be what they want to be.&quot; 


TITLE: The spice of life
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia is definitely not a country associated with vegetarian food. Traditional Russian food is stodgy and rich, with potatoes and meat as typical cornerstones that provide energy for surviving long, harsh winters. It's not much of a surprise then that in many St. Petersburg restaurants purely vegetarian dishes are not often available and vegetarians are forced to switch to salads or plain side dishes such as rice or potatoes. But there are a couple of restaurants offering vegetarian food, and one of them, Kashmir, is located just a stone's throw away from Vladimirsky cathedral. 
 
Kashmir offers authentic Indian cuisine with a vegetarian theme, which is not a novel idea. India is a country where the vegetarian tradition is widespread due to religious and traditional beliefs and the variety in vegetarian dishes is unique to Indian meals. For both my friend and I, Indian cuisine was new ground, and we studied the menu well. Most of dishes are based on lentils (<i>dal</i>), beans, vegetables and rice. Often, these ingredients are also combined with fruit, as in the <i>Burma apelsinovaya</i> soup, a mixture of vegetables, oranges, spices and cream, or <i>Zakat Mamsakhardi</i>, a soya schnitzel in a pineapple sauce. As the servings at Kashmir are rather small, it was recommended to us that we order several dishes to share, rather than choosing one main meal. For starters, we both ordered soup: <i>Tamadar Dal Tarkari</i>, a lentil soup with tomatoes (48 rubles, $1.64) for me; mushroom cream soup (65 rubles, $2.23) for my companion. Following our waitress's recommendations, we then selected <i>Panir Shak</i> (fried spinach with homemade cheese and herbs for 58 rubles, $1.99), <i>Rassvet Amamsakhardi</i> (a soya schnitzel in curry sauce for 260 rubles, $8.90), <i>Sabdzh</i> (fried vegetables with spices for 52 rubles, $1.78) and two flat breads filled with cheese (35 rubles, $1.20). 
 Our first encounter with Indian cuisine turned out to be a tantalizing experience. As spices are an essential part of the Indian cuisine, Indian cooks take a pride in spicing their dishes to perfection. Unlike European or American cuisine, where spicy food often translates as extremely hot, Indian cuisine uses spices to enhance the flavor of a dish and to promote better health. I don't know whether the dishes we ordered were prepared by an Indian cook but both my friend and I share the same opinion - that the art of spicing is mastered to perfection at Kashmir. We both thoroughly enjoyed the delicacies that were bought in rapid succession to our table. My favorite was the <i>Panir shak</i>, which contained chunks of mild, semi-soft cheese, and it didn't last long. My friend particularly enjoyed his choice of mushroom soup. We also liked the way the food was presented. The Sabdzh was, for example, nicely garnished with cherry tomatoes and herbs. 
 Kashmir also boasts an impressive assortment of Indian drinks and teas. <i>Lassi,</i> a milkshake-like drink made from yoghurt, is severed in several styles. I opted for sweet lassi (55 rubles, $1.89) made with fruits, rose water, spices and yoghurt, and it was a very refreshing drink. We both had tea with our meals - an exotic blend of fruits for me (50 rubles, $1.71) and black tea (80 rubles, $2.74) for my friend. In India, the consumption of alcohol is often not allowed due to religious beliefs, so guests dining at Kashmir will find only a small selection of alcoholic drinks and will have to manage without beer for an evening. 
 Those who believe that alcohol is essential for relaxing will be taught otherwise at Kashmir. The Indian decor and oriental music softly playing in the background create a very calming atmosphere. If the music alone does not help one to relax after a hard day, maybe smoking on a hookah will. 
 Long after we finished our meals, we were still sitting at our table and absorbing the ambience. We enjoyed our first culinary encounter with Indian cuisine and will definitely come again. And a glance at our bill also proved that good dining in pleasant surroundings need not be expensive.

TITLE: Egg bound
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vanora Bennett fell in love with Russia as a child, in an English garden, over a bit of lumpfish caviar served by her mother as a birthday treat. Years later, having traveled as a journalist through Russia at the height of the post-Soviet chaos, she still remembers that first impression. &quot;Caviar meant Russia to me, and Russia meant escape.&quot; 
 
Bennett's aptly titled book, published last year and recently released in paperback, is about dreams and obsessions. It is neither a rounded portrait of Russia, nor a field guide to caviar. Rather, it follows the author's path from restless girl to reckless adolescent to ambitious young journalist in 1990s Russia. Caviar is one of the obsessions that lures her to Russia, and one of the disillusionments that sends her back home. 
 Entranced by Eastern European emigres and fairy tales, Bennett studies Russian in the West and then in Soviet Leningrad, where she has &quot;a brief career as a Russian gangster's moll.&quot; In less hyperbolic terms, she falls in with a group of fartsovshchiki, or black marketeers, who provide her with her first taste of real caviar - produced from under the table by a waiter looking for a kiss - and whet her appetite for more.
 The ticket back to Russia is through journalism, and - between her story and the history of sturgeon fishing, the caviar industry and azart, a word meaning &quot;heat, excitement, fervor,&quot; the thrill of the hunt or a gamble, which she elevates (with questionable linguistic accuracy) to the guiding principle of the Russian 1990s. It is, she asserts, &quot;an extreme form of acute compulsion known only in Russia. ... It means taking risks, and not giving a damn about anyone or anything as long as you get what you want. And it means not being satisfied that you've got enough till you've got far too much.&quot;
 Which brings Bennett to the caviar industry, from the wars to win fishing rights in the Caspian Sea, to the communists' hellbent pollution of the sturgeon's spawning grounds, to the poaching of the post-Soviet era. While one could argue that caviar hunting is more a matter of greed than gambling, Bennett's statistics are staggering: In 1958, more than a million sturgeons were registered in the spawning grounds of the Volga; by 1987, there were just over 2,000. And the official catch fell from 15,000 tons in 1990 to 650 by 2001 - with an estimated 10,000 tons poached.
 Bennett's writing often becomes overwrought when describing this tawdry side of Russia. &quot;[Caviar's] taste,&quot; she writes, &quot;also recalls the dashing, freebooting lifestyle of the free Cossacks, who are revered to this day for never knuckling under to the powers that be.&quot; For her, maybe. But not for most Russians, who give their children thick slices of bread slathered with butter and caviar the way American mothers give their children vitamins. To Russians, caviar is no more redolent of risk than a bowl of cornflakes.
 But Bennett isn't interested in the mundane. The Russia she evokes is one of &quot;knife fights and gunfights and bottle fights and protection rackets,&quot; where women sell themselves or their household possessions, where everyone has a get-rich-quick scheme and an air of desperation. Her prose is uneven: graced by lush descriptions and vivid, spot-on images, and yet peppered with inaccuracies, such as placing the 1998 plummet of the ruble in 1991, and hyperbole, as in the &quot;sometimes surly, often drunk, and possibly violent [taxi] drivers of Moscow&quot; - a breathtaking exaggeration. She barely sees, or barely writes about, the more humdrum lives of the majority of Russians not infected by the madness of what she calls azart. 
 She is herself infected, following hot stories through war zones, recklessly drifting into marriage, covering a slow-motion coup in Azerbaijan. What interests her most is not the journalism itself, but her increasing distaste for the edgy atmosphere around it.
 If at first one senses a certain glance-over-the-shoulder self-righteousness in such words, over time Bennett's disgust becomes genuine. The razzle-dazzle of the &quot;dollar bubble&quot; of foreign privilege loses its allure. She scores caviar in the south and then dumps it in the trash can. Her search for an ancestor - a relative named Horace Wallich who once worked for Faberge - crowds out her other interests. &quot;I was surprised at how much I wanted to reclaim my lost family,&quot; she writes. On a trip back to England, she tells her estranged father about her search. &quot;You mean Uncle Horace?&quot; her father asks blandly. The answer, like Dorothy's ruby slippers, had always been available to Bennett. And, like Dorothy, &quot;It was just beginning to dawn on me that I might enjoy coming home.&quot; 
 Before she leaves, Bennett takes one more trip to the south, where she meets with a quiet typesetter who was once imprisoned for poaching sturgeon on the Volga. The story he tells is simple and moving: He chased after fast money and power, he got caught, he served his time and he starting writing poetry. Now he works as a typesetter and only eats a bit of fish, &quot;so as not to lose the taste for it altogether. But caviar makes me sick to my soul.&quot; 
 Perhaps, like all foreigners who fall in love with Russia, Bennett is lured by what she dreams she will find. Self-destructive, reckless and ambitious, by her own admission, she discovers a country that mirrors herself and dashes headlong into the abyss. It's only when a St. Petersburg friend tells her, &quot;Go home. Don't come back (except to see us),&quot; that Bennett returns to her &quot;blameless, bourgeois English life.&quot; 
 

 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter. </i>

TITLE: The Price of Sex
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: For those who have observed the astronomical growth of the global sex trade in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe over the past 15 years, the shock of Victor Malarek's &quot;The Natashas&quot; is unfortunately all too familiar. But Malarek brings home the severity and tragedy of the phenomenon through the personal stories of women who have been trafficked, his encounters with peacekeepers across the world, and interviews with both men and women who valiantly try to combat the ever-growing phenomenon with little success and, often, great personal cost.
 
The most unusual part of this investigation is that it is written by a male. Malarek's outrage at fellow men who blithely have sex with women whose tortured bodies reveal that they are not willing prostitutes, or at international peacekeepers who boast of the sex slaves they have bought, is a rare occurrence in the trafficking discourse. While many men have written eloquently on the drug trade, human smuggling and the arms market, anti-trafficking literature and activism is dominated by women. 
 The reasons are obvious - the physical and psychological suffering of young women, often minors, moves other women to demand action from their governments and multilateral organizations. And yet, with the exceptions of U.S. Congressman Chris Smith and Senators Sam Brownback and Paul Wellstone, who sponsored anti-trafficking legislation in 2000, few men have been as determined activists against the sex trade as Malarek.
 Indeed, Malarek correctly reports, the activists, investigators and NGOs combating the problem at its frontlines are among the few to be admired. 
 The poor countries that provide most of the trafficked women are too corrupt and indifferent to address the problem even though, in some of these countries, the loss of women to trafficking is already having demographic consequences, a fact overlooked by Malarek. 
 Ironically, recent economic and political advances for women in Western countries have dramatically lowered and jeopardized the status of women from former socialist states. As fewer domestic women voluntarily enter prostitution in more affluent societies, the demand for foreign workers rises. 
 Unfortunately, the richer countries are doing little to reverse the process. Instead, South Korea has expanded the number of entertainment visas issued to Russians and other foreign women. These visas are nothing more than a cover for prostitution. Malarek also neglects to mention that his own country, Canada, has dramatically increased the number of visas issued to dancers, swelling the number of trafficked women.
 Nor has the price for sexual services in Western Europe kept pace with inflation. As Paul Holmes, one of the world's best anti-trafficking cops, explained to me several years ago when he was still working in London's Charing Cross police station, during the years he fought trafficking, the costs of housing, food and all consumer goods rose dramatically. Only the cost of sexual services did not go up, testifying to the enormous increase in the availability of prostitutes from Eastern Europe.
 Singling out Germany and the Netherlands as particular magnets for trafficked women, Malarek suggests that the recent legalization of prostitution in those countries merely expanded demand for foreign trade, since Western European women who have alternative job prospects are less willing to seek employment in their countries' huge red-light districts. 
 According to Malarek, the Dutch sex industry now makes up 5 percent of that nation's economy. There is therefore a financial disincentive in countries such as the Netherlands to address the problem.
 A recent criminological conference in Amsterdam that I attended featured a tour of the city's red-light district meant to highlight the successes of the Dutch regulatory approach. However, Russian and Ukrainian attendees returned from a lengthy trip to the same neighborhood complaining that all they saw there were women from their own countries. 
 The opening plenary address by one of the Netherlands' top organized-crime specialists, Cyrille Fijnaut, echoed concerns that the legalization of prostitution has greatly increased trafficking. No European country has found the panacea.
 Malarek also discusses the abuse of trafficked women in the Balkans by NATO and by U.S., Canadian, British, Russian and French peacekeepers and DynCorp employees. In possibly the most moving part of the book, he documents the aborted raids of the United Nations International Police Task Force, the frightened and tortured young girls, and the harassment by their superiors of the few Americans ready to stand up to this mistreatment. It is an ugly story, repeated throughout the world wherever peacekeepers are assigned. The abuse of these women and the profits that accrue to the traffickers merely embed the illegal sex trade more deeply in the community, undermining the democratizing objectives of the peacekeeping missions. 
 If locals fail to stand up to the traffickers, it is often because the women imprisoned in the brothels adjoining the peacekeeping missions are imported from countries further east. Simply referred to as &quot;Natashas,&quot; as Malarek explains, the women have already lost their names and identities. It is a phenomenon all too familiar in recent European history: dehumanization of the Other and a readiness to overlook gross abuses of foreigners and weaker members of society. 
 In this respect, as well as in others, sex trafficking recalls the genocides of the mid-20th century. Like many Holocaust victims who survived World War II, the victims of trafficking are rarely able to rebuild their lives.
 As Malarek points out, some 50 percent of women who escape from their traffickers wind up being retrafficked. The reasons are clear: Broken by the experience, these women have no other way of earning a living. The traffickers who control the business are sophisticated, organized criminals with private intelligence services. Often, victims on the run are grabbed at airports by elements of the trafficking network and returned to sexual exploitation. 
 In other cases, the traffickers hunt girls back to their home communities, where their families lack the resources to protect them. Widespread corruption in the law enforcement agencies of most regions of the former Soviet Union rules out security for these most vulnerable of victims.
 As one International Organization of Migration official in a major source country explained to me, &quot;we can repair the broken jaws and provide false teeth to replace those knocked out by the traffickers, but there is nothing we can do to heal the psychological damage. There is no place for the returned trafficking victims in this society.&quot; The same helplessness could be heard from NGO caregivers in Siberia who had tried to repatriate victims from their region.
 I concur with Malarek's conclusion that, despite new anti-trafficking legislation, an increased awareness among the public, and the significant resources allocated to fight trafficking by both the United States and Western European countries, little success has been achieved in stemming the problem. The profits are so enormous, the risk so low for the traffickers and the supply of impoverished women so great that trafficking has expanded almost unhindered to meet the rising demand. 
 Can the activism of women in the United States, Western Europe and the source countries be sustained over the years it will take to address the problem? 
 The 19th century saw the outlawing and sharp reduction of slavery in many areas of the world as a consequence of significant popular movements. Perhaps, with such determination, the 21st century will also see a decline in human trafficking, one of the most tragic forms of contemporary slavery.
 
 <i>
Louise I. Shelley is a professor at the School of International Service and the founder and director of the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at American University (www.american.edu/traccc). 
 Along with Sally Stoecker, she is an editor of &quot;Human Traffic and Transnational Crime: Eurasian and American Perspectives,&quot; to be published later this fall. </i>

TITLE: How I Shot Hirohito
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;And don't fuss,&quot; the man in the peaked cap and a major's insignia on his collars says, giving me a murderous look.
 
&quot;Don't fuss,&quot; he says brusquely again. &quot;This is not some elected politician who has bought the votes of the public. He is a descendant of the sun.
 &quot;He is the sun's descendant,&quot; the man says, experimenting with the word order and listening to the sound of words that are strange to him come out.
 He rolls the words around in his mouth and then spits them out: &quot;And don't fuss - don't fuss.
 &quot;And don't step over the line. If you do it might be the beginning of World War III,&quot; he exclaims, then laughs.
 &quot;And how much time will we have to shoot?&quot; I ask him, rehearsing my lines.
 He gives me a steely look in the eye, glances downward and says. &quot;I don't know, only four or five minutes, not more.&quot;
 The officer is Georgy Pitskhelauri, a Japanese-Russian actor, and the only Russian actor with a speaking part in celebrated St. Petersburg director Alexander Sokurov's latest film, &quot;The Sun.&quot; 
 I am acting for the first time in my life in a film, playing a photographer in postwar Tokyo in August 1945.
 Sokurov, probably best known for his single-shot 90-minute movie, &quot;The Russian Ark,&quot; (2002) was last month completing principal photography on &quot;The Sun,&quot; which is a third part in a four-part series that started with &quot;Moloch&quot; (1999) about Hitler and &quot;Taurus&quot; (2001) about Lenin. &quot;The Sun&quot; is about Japanese emperor Hirohito. 
 The subject of the last film has not yet been announced, but Sokurov, a prolific maker of documentary and semi-fiction film series since the late 1970s, is expected to complete the quartet.
 Apart from myself, three other native-English speakers were chosen to appear in the film as photographers. With Russian actor Dmitry Podnozov, we snap Hirohito showing his face to the world after the Japanese war is over.
 Sokurov says the film has no Russian language in it. It's entirely in English and Japanese. To use Russian actors would have been dishonest, he says, and he wants us to improvise and not necessarily stick to the script.
 Pitskhelauri, who intimidates us all day when in role, is playing a Japanese-speaking American officer, who thinks that photographing Hirohito, whom the Japanese believed to be a living god, is blasphemous and does not really want to go along with it. In character, we are unruly and Pitskhelauri shouts &quot;Idiots!&quot; at us after we mistake the emperor's adjutant for the emperor. The actor also displays a softer side.
 Moments after repeating one scene, Sokurov strides over to the Russian extras behind us who are dressed as U.S. soldiers. The director addresses them, telling them they are the &quot;weak link.&quot;
 Pitskhelauri, who has been playing a martinet and remonstrating us, gives me a wink, grins and says, &quot;I'm glad we're not the weak link.&quot;
 Making up the press pack are two other real-life journalists, Englishman Tobin Auber and American John Varoli, an English playwright called Jeremy, and Podnozov. We are all operating vintage cameras and wear sand-brown uniforms, designed to blend in with the color of the beaches many Americans fought their way across in the years after Pearl Harbor.
 But it is much colder in the Leningrad Oblast than it would have been in Tokyo and we drape ourselves with coats and sip tea in between takes.
 Pitskhelauri does an impressive number of press-ups to keep warm. I'm glad he's not a real officer - I'm not sure I could do any at all if he ordered me to join in.
 The filming takes place outside an institute built in the constructivist style in the 1930s, the Institute of Experimental Genetics and High Neural Activity, which Sokurov assures us is a close copy of one in Tokyo where the emperor resided after the rest of his wooden imperial palace buildings were burned by the Allies' firebombing of the capital.
 On my shoulder is a badge indicating I take photos for &quot;Stars and Stripes,&quot; the U.S. forces newspaper.
 I am a New Zealander and I am a bit worried that my accent, which has become fairly international from many years living abroad, won't sound right. But Sokurov has already assured us that the Allies, including New Zealand, fought in the Pacific alongside U.S. forces and the photographers could have come from different countries.
 One of the make-up women looks circumspect at my beard and says, &quot;I doubt that World War II troops would have had beards. Would you mind shaving it off?&quot; I say, &quot;No, I wouldn't.&quot; But it doesn't come to that - Sokurov says we are actually civilians and merely wearing uniforms so I keep my bristles.
 Varoli, who is trim and looks the part of an American soldier, also has the right drawl.
 &quot;What a country, we've flown 15 hours to get here and all we see are ruins. But this place is like some kind of paradise,&quot; he says convincingly.
 His humor also seems genuine when he suggests that the emperor looks like Charlie Chaplin.
 Everybody present starts to call &quot;Charlie, Charlie,&quot; to the humble man in the bowler hat.
 Pitskhelauri glowers and the adjutant looks uncomfortable before pushing us back.
 Between takes, the &quot;soldiers&quot; talk with us and tell us they don't understand English. One, used to films about the Soviet-German front no doubt, says quite a few words in German.
 What should they say to us when Pitskhelauri yells that the photo shoot is over and they have to make us stop?
 &quot;Get back,&quot; I tell them.
 It's a chilly day, but occasionally the sun shines brightly. The filming stops and starts. A team of sound experts, costume experts, and translators flutter around us. There's also a friendly team providing food and drink.
 Several Japanese people are on the set. A mournful looking Japanese woman passes on Sokurov's instructions, given in Russian, to the men playing Hirohito and his adjutant. Others are taking still and moving shots of the making of the film.
 When sound is recorded and we have no particular lines to say we try to talk about World War II-type subjects - about Truman and Roosevelt, Betty Grable and Greta Garbo, Iwo Jima and Normandy.
 The scenes are shot many times over from different perspectives. Sometimes we get an instruction to freeze, so that when the scene moves into the next frame taken from a different standpoint we have not changed positions.
 The old camera I am holding has no film in it, but I try to act as if it works. I focus on Hirohito's face, frame what I think is a good shot, and snap the shutter. After Varoli calls him &quot;Charlie,&quot; the actor playing Hirohito, who looks much older than 44, the age the emperor would have been at the time of the historical event being re-enacted, comes to life next to the roses. He removes his hat and smiles broadly.
 I reckon that if I had been a &quot;Life&quot; photographer back in 1945, my snap would have made the front page.
 
 <i>
Alexander Sokurov's &quot;The Sun&quot; will be released in 2005. </i>

TITLE: Milosevic Trial On
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Testifying for the defense in Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial, a German journalist told the court Tuesday that ethnic-Albanian separatists in the former Yugoslavia deliberately attempted to provoke an attack on civilians by Serb troops. 
 
The journalist, Franz Josef Hutsch, a former German army major who spent months with the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998 and 1999, also said the KLA ran drugs and prostitutes into other parts of Europe to finance weapons purchases. 
 Hutsch described the KLA as a well-organized force, assisted by officers from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco who had trained somewhere in Turkey. 
 KLA tactics during the ceasefire in late 1998 included staging hit-and-run attacks on Serb patrols designed to &quot;force them into a trap and try to provoke an excessive reaction&quot; in order to hasten foreign intervention, he said. 
 They also tried to lure the Serbs into attacking civilians in early 1999 so the images would be shown during peace negotiations taking place in Rambouillet, France, he added. 
 The testimony came after a month-long recess in which the case resumed much as it had left off - with Milosevic demanding that he be allowed to fire his court-appointed lawyers and represent himself.

TITLE: Michael Jackson Angered by Eminem Video
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson is angered by the way he is mocked in rapper Eminem's recently released video &quot;Just Lose It&quot; and has asked cable music stations to remove the video from their rotations. 
 
In the video, Eminem is costumed as Jackson and is seen with a group of boys in the background, jumping around as he sings about Jackson's child molestation allegations: &quot;Come here, little kiddie, on my lap. Guess who's back with a brand new rap.&quot; 
 Jackson has pleaded not guilty in Santa Barbara County to child molestation, conspiracy and administering alcohol to an underage companion. 
 &quot;I am very angry at Eminem's depiction of me in his video,&quot; Jackson said Tuesday in an interview with comedian Steve Harvey on Los Angeles radio station 100.3 FM. &quot;I feel that it is outrageous and disrespectful. It is one thing to spoof, but it is another to be demeaning and insensitive.&quot; 
 Also in the video, Eminem ridicules plastic surgery done on Jackson's nose, and an accident in which Jackson's hair caught fire while he was filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. 
 Only Black Entertainment Television has agreed to pull the video. The network's president and founder, Robert Johnson, said he felt it was inappropriate to disparage a celebrity.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Afghan Vote Count
 </b>

KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's electoral commission has given the go-ahead Thursday for counting to begin in Saturday's disputed presidential election after charges of fraudulent multiple voting forced a delay. 
 "Counting will begin today," an electoral official said. Ballot boxes that are the subject of the inquiry will be isolated for investigation and the votes will not be counted yet, he said. 
 
 
<b>Inspectors Iraq-Bound
 </b>

VIENNA (Reuters) - UN inspectors, barred from most of Iraq since last year's invasion, are ready to return to probe the disappearance of equipment that could be used in atomic weapons, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Wednesday. 
 The IAEA, which monitored Saddam Hussein's nuclear sites before last year's Iraq war, informed the U.N. Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons have been vanishing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington had noticed. 
 
 
<b>MIA Remains to U.S.
 </b>

SEOUL, South Korea - Remains believed to be those of U.S. soldiers have been recovered in North Korea and will be returned home this week a half century after the 1950-53 Korean War ended, the U.S. military said Thursday. 
 The remains, brought across the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, will be honored on Friday during a ceremony at the U.S. 8th Army headquarters in Seoul. 
 U.S. and North Korean teams are recovering remains of U.S. soldiers missing from the Korean War in a joint search project that began in 1996. 
 
 
<b>Berlin: No Iraq Troops
 </b>

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Wednesday ruled out sending German troops to Iraq after his defense minister said a deployment could be possible in the future. 
 Defense Minister Peter Struck had said on Wednesday that Germany, which staunchly opposed the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, could eventually send troops to Iraq. 
 But Schroeder was quick to restate Germany's position after the remarks. 
 "The position of Germany will not change," Schroeder said at a news conference in Rome. 
 
 
<b>Boost for Turkey
 </b>

ROME (AFP) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday they favored opening EU membership talks with Turkey without delay. 
 "Both of us are for opening negotiations on the basis of the recommendation of the European Commission," Schroeder said. 
 Turkey received a boost to its hopes of membership last week when the EU Commission in Brussels recommended a start to negotiations, but EU leaders are to make a final decision in December.
 
 
<b>Al-Qaida in Jordan 
 </b>

JERUSALEM (AP) - The Central Intelligence Agency is interrogating senior al-Qaida operatives at a secret detention center in Jordan, an Israeli newspaper reported Wednesday, citing international intelligence sources. 
 The report was published a day after the New York-based group Human Rights Watch said at least 11 al-Qaida suspects have "disappeared" in U.S. custody and that some have allegedly been tortured in their undisclosed locations. 



TITLE: Portuguese Men-O'-War Vanquish Feckless Russia
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LISBON - Portugal crushed Russia 7-1in a World Cup qualifier Wednesday as they bounced back from a humiliating draw with Liechtenstein at the weekend. 
 
Winger Cristiano Ronaldo and substitute Armando Petit both scored twice as Russia crumbled in the face of a superb Portuguese performance in the Alvalade Stadium in Lisbon. 
 Portugal pressed Russia from the first minute and striker Pauleta opened the scoring after 26 minutes, tapping in after being set up by Ronaldo. 
 The unstoppable Ronaldo notched his first after 39 minutes following a goalmouth scramble. 
 Russia, which lost 2-0 to Portugal in Lisbon during Euro 2004 when they were eliminated in the first round, went 3-0 down on the stroke of halftime when Deco curled in from outside the area. 
 Ronaldo made it 4-0 with a powerful strike in the 69th minute before Russia, who were missing several key players including first-choice goalkeeper Sergei Ovchinnikov, pulled one back through Andrei Arshavin. 
 However, Portugal were not finished and Simao Sabrosa made it 5-1 from another Ronaldo pass before substitute Petit completed the rout with a late double.
 Russian coach Georgy Yartsev said the absence of key players could not justify such an uneven result which he labeled &quot;a disgrace.&quot;
 Yartsev, who left the bench minutes before the end of the game, complained that the players were not motivated or following directions and said he may resign. 
 &quot;Upon returning home, I will discuss my future with the president of the federation because it appears obvious that there are some players in the Russian squad who have little or no motivation,&quot; Yartsev said. &quot;When everything is bad and no player follows directions, it seems like no one wants to continue with [me] as coach. But I apologize for the disaster. We do not have courage or initiative.&quot; 
 The mood in the Portuguese camp was a complete contrast. &quot;Today we committed few errors. It was one of the better performances,&quot; Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said. 
 &quot;We had some good plays during Euro 2004, but today everything was perfect. It was the best!&quot; 
 Saturday's draw against Liechtenstein &quot;stimulated the players for tonight's match&quot;, he said. &quot;In 12 shots, we scored seven goals.&quot; 
 &quot;Us, more than anyone, we want to be in the Mundial [World Cup]. We do not want to stay at home and watch others play,&quot; Brazilian-born playmaker Deco said. 
 &quot;This was a result a little unusual, but I think that we were superior in all of it.&quot; 
 Manchester United winger Ronaldo added: &quot;The draw with Liechtenstein is past. I think that this game demonstrates we are a great team and shows our value.&quot; 
 &quot;We won with a high score, which no one was expecting, not even the players, but we were very confident,&quot; he added. 
 Portugal's astonishing victory put them level at the top of the group on 10 points with Slovakia, with both having an identical 15-3 goal tally. 
 Liechtenstein, meanwhile, followed up where they left off on Saturday by winning a World Cup qualifier for the first time in their history by crushing fellow minnows Luxembourg 4-0 away. 
 Remarkably they have four points - the same number as Russia and Latvia who drew 2-2 with Estonia. 
 Before Saturday's 2-2 draw with Portugal, Liechtenstein had lost 20 straight qualifiers with a goal tally of 4-84.
 
 <i>(Reuters, AFP)
 </i>


TITLE: NY Yankees Lead Red Sox 2-0
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Pedro Martinez has a new &quot;daddy.&quot; His name is Jon Lieber. 
While the raucous crowd at Yankee Stadium taunted Martinez with booming chants of &quot;Who's Your Daddy?&quot; Lieber shut down the highest-scoring offense in the major leagues. 
 A No. 5 starter pitching against a three-time Cy Young Award winner, Lieber took a shutout into the eighth inning. John Olerud backed him with a two-run homer in the sixth off the tiring Martinez, and the Yankees beat the Red Sox 3-1 Wednesday night for a 2-0 lead in their American League championship series rematch. 
 &quot;I knew coming into this game what Pedro has done in the past in situations like this, so there was no room for error,&quot; Lieber said. 
 He loves being under the radar, keeping a low profile, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Like it or not, Martinez can't avoid the spotlight. He had it before and it only grew larger after a loss to the Yankees on Sept. 24 prompted him to say: 
 &quot;Just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy. I can't find a way to beat them at this point.&quot; 
 He insisted he doesn't mind the taunts that have followed that quote. 
 &quot;It actually made me feel really, really good,&quot; Martinez said. &quot;I actually realized that I was somebody important because I caught the attention of 60,000 people... plus the whole world... If you reverse time back 15 years ago, I was sitting under a mango tree without 50 cents to actually pay for a bus. And today, I was the center of attention of the whole city of New York. I thank God for that.&quot; 
 On this night, however, Lieber threw superior pitches, allowing three hits in seven-plus innings. Even more remarkable, he's still recovering from elbow surgery that sidelined him last season. 
 &quot;He was as good as I've seen him all year,&quot; Yankees captain Derek Jeter said. 
 After a day off, the series resumes Friday at Fenway Park, with Kevin Brown pitching for the Yankees against Bronson Arroyo.

TITLE: Baltika in Bribe Scandal
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Baltika Kaliningrad soccer team attempted to fix a game against Chernomorets Novorossiisk to help avoid relegation, a Kaliningrad newspaper reported - offering a rare insight into corruption in the Russian league.
 
Kaliningradskiye Noviye Kolesa has transcribed what it says is a series of taped telephone calls by the head of first division side Baltika Kaliningrad, Dmitry Chepel, in which he discusses a $60,000 payment to Chernomorets Novorossiisk and 12,000 rubles ($410) to a referee to secure his team's victory.
 Baltika, which is in 20th place and still heading for relegation, beat Chernomorets 1-0 on Sept. 14.
 In one of the conversations, Chepel and Spartak Moscow head Yury Pervak discuss a previous case of match-fixing for $50,000, the newspaper said. Spartak Moscow refused to comment Tuesday.
 Chernomorets director Bachir Khut confirmed that Chepel had talked to him about fixing the game but said he refused, RIA-Novosti reported Tuesday.
 Baltika denied trying to fix the game. &quot;The recording was made illegally, and it is fake,&quot; said the club's press officer, Yevgeny Zhokhov.
 Kaliningradskiye Noviye Kolesa said it has handed over the tapes to prosecutors. Chepel will fly to Moscow to ask the Professional Football League to open an investigation of its own, Zhokhov said.
 The league has not commented about the report so far, but the chances of a thorough investigation are unlikely.
 The only time a Russian team has been punished for match-fixing was in 1996, when second division side Iriston Vladikavkaz was disqualified from the league for attempting to bribe an opponent. Many say that bribery is widespread in the lower leagues.
 Oleg Tereshonkov, manager of first division club Smena Saturn St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, has admitted to regularly bribing players, managers and referees. &quot;I've never met a referee who didn't take money,&quot; he once said.
 The Premier League is generally considered to have a better reputation than the lower leagues.
 However, lawmakers from St. Petersburg appealed to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov this month to make sure that referees are fair to their home team, Zenit, which is locked in a battle with CSKA and Lokomotiv Moscow in one of the most exciting title races in years. 
 Zenit coach Vlastimil Petrzela has said his side will not be allowed to win the title. The lawmakers blamed the oligarchs who own Russian clubs for their worries, and said the owners have separate sections in their budgets for paying off referees.